Winged Lady

May 10th, 2017

As promised, the image that I hinted at yesterday is now up for view and I'm decently satisfied with the results. Possibly for the purpose of children's book illustration I need to go back to a more textured and traditional looking painterly style but this image was simply to test the limits of the ongoing developing shadow overlayed base colour artwork style and it came out far better than I expected. There was certainly a lot of changes that had to be made to various continual problem areas, like the wings and the feather look of the body, but it somehow looks okay. Now it's time to come up with sketches of summer and re-explore the world of digital watercolour!

Spring Postcard and Dune Poster

May 9th, 2017

It's certainly been a while! Been busy with client work and juggling projects but things have finally quieted down a bit and now I've got a few updates. There's one more image in progress that I'm not quite ready to put up but it's probably the best quality image I've made though not necessarily the most interesting. Anyway this post is about my spring postcard mailer that has just today been sent out to a bunch of Canadian publishing companies as well as a few choice US publishers. It didn't print quite as nicely as the fall postcard but still packs a decent artistic punch so I'm reasonably satisfied and hope to catch some eyes. No shipment errors this time since I used a larger print service and may actually prefer the former. Going to focus on a nice summer postcard after this!

And here below is something I spent a great many hours on, a painting for my special lovely significant other!

Many many hours spent on this bad boy but it came out very nice and hopefully will look even better in the intended print form. I don't have much to say on it except that this style is slowly developing in some pretty great ways and I can't wait to see how it adapts further. Anyway, the 'l' key on this dang keyboard is broken so I'm copy pasting and having a lot of trouble typing this out. Will have a second update soon with the aforementioned new piece!

Postcard and Jellygirl

November 23rd, 2016

Hey everyone, it has been a while and I meant to update much sooner but things got a bit hectic in a lot of ways and it's only finally sort of settled. So to begin with, I'm now plowing ahead with my goal of becoming a children's book illustrator and ended up creating a postcard mailer to send out to all the top art directors around the country. Cue printing problems, adjustments, shipping errors, lost packages, etc, but that's all finally done with and I got a good look at the process through this first trial run. The postcard that I've sent out looks awesome and above is the image on the front! And here is the image in printed form as well, looks spectacular and I'm hoping at least someone notices though realistically the majority will end up in the trash.

And now on to news of the promised jellygirl! Which.. did not turn out great, or at least the original did not and I finally gave up and started over and tried it out from a slightly different perspective and focusing on other parts of the image. So here it is:

Maybe not so much of a girl now :P The original focused on a jellygirl child with a jellyfish looking bubble around her head and a lot of weird frills but there was something unsettling about the childlike nature and while I had meant the style to appear glowing and beautiful, it turned out more eerie than pretty. The new version also posed a bit of issue keeping the image from becoming creepy and weird, especially because the fish at the front were a later addition to try to add more life and depth to the image, but it manages to come off more mysterious and light than disturbing.

Alright this is becoming rambling so I'll just say that there's a new image in the works, one that plays with snow and the imagination of active children and which will come out hopefully shortly! Thank you everyone who reads these news updates and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Children of the Ants and Paper Prince!

September 23rd, 2016

Well it's definitely been a while, meant to update this blog a bit sooner but things have gotten pretty hectic juggling a few clients and realising I need to start making postcards to send out to prospective publishers. It's like the things the teachers said in illustration classes finally click on a new level and now I understand what is needed in order to succeed. Anyway, other than that I've gotten super into crochet and making awesome cute stuffed animals, so that's cool too! Regardless, here we go.. a few progress shots of the making of Paper Prince!

Here again I started out with a base colour and then added layers of shadow to every object, carefully erasing away the places where light would be hitting. It's definitely an interesting technique and probably one most illustrators use but I want to push the boundaries and see what else can be done with it. Got another piece started that has to do with really jelly girls so we'll see how that turns out. Good luck with yourselves, whoever is reading this!

Eternal Sunshine!

August 18th, 2016

So my goals these days are to try and create as many new pieces as possible per month, barring any crazy work demands that could suck up all my free time in an instant. So far it's been pretty nice and this new style is way easier to work with than any of my previous, especially because the lighting and shadow is so adjustable and textures add so much flavour to the pieces. This most recent work is the finished version of the sketch from the previous post, though this time complete and pretty as a butt! Not really sure what the backstory is here but feel free to imagine any scenario you wish as there's lots of little symbolic images to tempt the creative mind. I made sure to take plenty of progress shots this time around to show the development so here they are!

As you can see, the style starts out pretty simple enough with a very base colour layer and then I put shadow layers and lighting overlays on top to add depth and dimension. The colour direction started out a little confused but the end results in a fairly pleasing aesthetic with a surprisingly appealing text overlayed. Sometimes the process of working through a piece leaves some pretty fascinating results and you just have to feel your way through the adventure and try to predict where the end might take you. Regardless, I'm pretty satisfied and hope that the artwork is as pleasing to everyone else.

Ooh and before I forget, here is a sneak peek of the next image! To be called 'The Paper Prince', I'll leave that up to imagination as well ;)

Second post!

August 15th, 2016

Two posts in a row, but on different days! Except written on the same day! It's like the artist is trying to create filler fluff that bends time and space in the mental mind place D: Alright, now that that's out of the way, just thought I'd open this post with some information on Ophelia's Day, shown here:

This image was originally going to be another book cover but I got carried away with the detail of the back portion and got confused and didn't end up putting any text down. Maybe sometime in the future but my goal this time was to get the image as close to the sketch as possible! Here is the sketch, which was one of my first experiments with this new art style of layering shadows and lighting over a flat colour layer.

Also included is a sketch of a new upcoming piece that is more practice of my new style as well as an interesting book cover idea.

Anyway, I'm going to try to have some sort of image update once a week and may eventually end up having a blog that will be linked here instead. Email me with any questions or concerns or read my webcomic for fun!

First post!

August 5th, 2016

Just setting up the news page for my new and improved portfolio! This revamp focuses on creating a more child friendly atmosphere and highlights the progress of my skill and is a seriously needed update. This post will just focus on the mandolin cover image, which features a friendly egret coaching his musical muse in the art of mandolin.. ing. I mainly just enjoy the idea of having a cover that features architecture or environment that 'wraps' with the book shape and technically it's not exactly accurate in this rendition as the spine is slanted and would have to be reworked to appear viewed head-on, but for the purpose of this concept will have to remain truncated.